Hey Friends,

Today is the day and Bloodborne is upon us. For many, this is an exciting new chapter in the "Souls" non-universe. For others however, this may be their first time with one of these games and I'm gonna be honest, making the decision to play your first From game because the commercial looks cool can be a pretty big mistake. Here are some opinions from a Souls fan that will hopefully help newcomers get an idea of what to expect before spending your $60.

The Short Version:

The “Souls” series (Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 1/2) is a series of Action Role Playing Games that takes some of the mechanics of classic ARPGS (think TLOZ series) as well as some of the concepts of classing Western RPGs in a tough as nails game that will challenge your patience, awareness, and reflexes every step of the way. You will die, a lot, and sometimes it will be frustrating but if you are paying attention you will always be able to see exactly what it was you did wrong and learn something from it. Its "tough but fair” attitude toward mechanics are not for everyone, but for those who like this type of game, this series offers easily some of the most rewarding and challenging experiences as well as replayability that few games can come close to.

The Long Version:

-The chief game designer, Miyazaki, is well loved by the fans of his games for his ability to create tight, fluid, responsive gameplay that gives players amazing control and depth of play style in order to conquer some of the more difficult and punishing games in the Role Playing genre. He often jokes about being a self-proclaimed “masochist” as he believes in a strict challenge the breeds a greater reward.

-BB is essentially a spiritual successor to his more recent works, Demon’s souls and it’s spiritual successor, Dark Souls. Developed by From with support from Sony, BB seems to capture the essence of the responsive and tactical melee combat, dark environments, and interesting level design that fans of those series came to love while tweaking the play style in a way that keeps things fresh and challenging for classic souls fans while also improving on some of the things that didn’t work for some in the past.

-Souls games are tough, like really tough especially if you are coming in blind. The beauty of it however is that with every death you learn something new. You learn not only more about the enemy you are fighting, but about the character you have built, its strengths, its weaknesses, how it controls, how you should invest your next skill point, etc. Every time you die in a souls game (except for a few very rare outlying “cheap” deaths) you should know exactly why you died and how you could have prevented that death as long as you were paying attention. For this reason the Souls series has earned its “Tough but fair” moniker which I stand behind 100%. I can think of very few games in the 3d era that have this level of rage inducing difficulty without it ever (again except for a handful of rare examples) feeling like the game cheated you. When you die in a Souls game, you know it’s because you f***ed up.

-If you like RPGs because you want a deep, long story with some happy ending that ties everything up, this isn’t likely the game for you. Again this is just based on the Souls series and doesn’t necessarily hold for BB but in the Souls game the story was pretty simple. The depth of a souls game comes not from the story (which more or less amounts to “the world is f***ed and you can kill all these bosses but it’ll still be f***ed at the end”) but from the world building. Dark Souls 1 is a perfect example of this, that world was a story in and of itself. The sense of awe and discovery was something I haven’t experienced since I first played The Legend of Zelda where you just want to poke in every corner to see what’s there. It could be a badass fire sword that scales with your skills, or it could be a secret boss that you have no hope of being right now. Either way it’s exciting.

-The Souls games are not your typical modern RPG, in fact some might say they are intentionally the opposite of that. In a souls game, everything is about exploration and that includes mechanics and story. What you get out of it is only as good as what you put in. There is actually a ton of story in the souls games, the difference is that the game doesn’t feed it to you. It’s as if the developers were like “hey wait a minute, we aren’t making a movie or a book, why are we telling stories the same way movies and books do?” and instead chose a different path. Since the core of the game is the gameplay, they made that the main player focus. From there if you want some deep story you have two options, you can explore everything and read the flavor text for everything you pick up, or you can just go online and get a summary in text or youtube form from someone who already chose the first option. Personally, I recommend the exploration route because then you come out of the game knowing the story the way you believe it to be, then you can join in on the community discussion to contribute your own thoughts as well as see other perspectives. If this isn’t for you, I totally get it, but I personally find it refreshing after far too many spoon-fed game stories in my life time.

-This concept of learning through exploration applies to the game mechanics as well. The game will tell you what the buttons do and the very basic information about what the stats are/do, but what stats are important and why are something the player needs to discover on their own. Again, I can see why this might not be for everyone, but I personally (along with millions of souls fans) love this aspect of the game. On top of that, they change things up from game to game to keep things fresh and make them work better with the style/mechanics of that game. So a stat like say “Poise”, while similar in description, may “mean” something different between DKS1 and DKS2.

-The checkpoint or “bonfire” system is a unique one in the souls series that we are starting to see influence other RPGs as well. The concept is simple, as you kill enemies you get souls, which can be turned in a specific places to increase your characters level and provide attribute points. If a player dies, all of their souls stay at the point they died and the enemies all respond. The player then, starting from the last checkpoint they hit, has the choice to go back to their body and recover the souls. If the player dies before getting back there, those souls are lost. This creates an exciting and frustrating risk/reward system when it comes to leveling your character. While 99% of the time going back to recover your souls isn’t that huge a deal (bonfires are surely limited, but not THAT far away from one another) sometimes the reason you died is because you wandered into an area that you simply can’t handle right now. In those cases you need to make the choice of whether those souls are worth another likely failure, of if you should instead just continue on in another direction and tackle those hard mobs later. There are plenty of places to easily farm souls in these games so if you really need them there are always options at your disposal. There should be little to no reason you are ever “stuck” to the point that your only option is to start the game over, there are always other places to go and get stronger.

-Dark Souls 2 tried to limit grinding options by having mobs “de-spawn” eventually. This resulted in a lot of negative response from fans (rightly so IMO) and I am happy to say that is gone in BB. That said if you like the sound of that, DKS2 will be out on current gen soon :)

-Something you will quickly become accustomed to is the idea of the “boss run”. Since bonfires are somewhat limited, and they almost never appear right near a boss, chances are you will get insinuations where a boss just keeps wrecking you and you don’t want to spend the time fighting the mobs on the way to the boss. Luckily, the souls game also have the “fog door” mechanic. All bosses are behind a fog door which, once you enter it, is an arena where you fight the boss that is closed off, preventing your escape but also preventing mobs from getting in and banking you. When in a situation where a tough boss fight is getting on your nerves, ignore those damn mobs and just make a mad dash for the door. There are few mobs in these games that can keep up with you sprinting character, so just rush the door, let them chase you, and hit the fog gate the second you can. You’ll be back in the boss arena in no time without having to deal with those pesky mobs over and over again.

-Just like any competitive game, the community can be quite toxic. Souls games are especially susceptible to this due to the “invasion” mechanics which allows players to jump into another players game unannounced and F their S up. This can get annoying especially if someone wants to be a real a-hole about it and they taunt you via PSN etc. Thankfully there are ways around it. The first option is to tap into the much larger and very available good side of the community. Jump online and make new friends that can help you with tactics, etc, and also summon them in to help you fight off the invader. Theres nothing better then seeing an invader realize their screwed when your buddies all roll up on him. The other option is, of course, offline mode. While I think the online stuff is cool, it is by no means core to the enjoyment of the game. If you are particularly sensitive to this type of tomfoolery (which really exists in EVERY online multiplayer game) the just play in offline mode. Boom, you’ve now got yourself a fantastic and difficult ARPG without any need to worry about real humans messing up your day.

As someone who grew up on RPGs and character action games but felt that both genres have gotten stale, repetitive, and well boring, the Souls series was a huge breath of fresh air and was easily the series of the generation for the PS3/360 era in my opinion. I would absolutely not recommend these games to everyone, just like how I wouldn’t recommend MLB The Show to someone who doesn’t like baseball. But if you are looking to try something challenging, unique, and fresh that at the same time has you feeling those gaming feels you felt when playing your NES in the late 80’/early 90’s, then I definitely recommend giving it a shot. The combat is tight and deliberate, the world building is beautiful and strange, and the difficulty is rewarding as hell.

That all said don’t just read this here, you should also see how these games play before making a decision. To get a really good idea for the nuance and depth the game has to offer I hight suggest watching GiantBomb’s “Load our last Souls” or “Breaking Brad:Demon’s Souls” series’ that they did. They are both highly informative and extremely entertaining. I hope this was informative to any new Souls peeps and as always…

PRAISE THE SUN!!!

;)